


Literal Fucking Nowhere

by Kari_Kurofai



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: M/M, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-18
Updated: 2014-09-18
Packaged: 2018-02-17 21:03:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2323097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kari_Kurofai/pseuds/Kari_Kurofai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt: Joelay roadtrip!AU with under the stars makeout session</p>
            </blockquote>





	Literal Fucking Nowhere

**Author's Note:**

> *kicks down Joelay door*
> 
> I HAVE ARRIVED

“‘The con is just one state over,’ Gus said. ‘We’ll just have everyone carpool,’ he said. ‘It’s no big deal,’ he said.” Ray throws his hands up towards the dark vastness of the sky above him that’s only just beginning to be peppered with stars. “You didn’t leave any margins for error, Gus!” He shouts at the sunset because, yeah, Gus isn’t here. He’s safe and snug at his house back in Austin, the fucker. “Like getting lost! Or the car battery dying in the middle of butt-fucking nowhere! Or the lack of cell reception.” Ray hurls his phone out in front of him, satisfied as it bounces across the desert landscape and disappears into a cloud of dust.

He regrets it not a moment later, and hops off the trunk of the car to go retrieve it. Thankfully it’s still in working order, and Ray brushes dirt off the screen and holds it into the air, unsurprised when it fails to pick up any bars.

“We’re going to die out here,” he moans, falling to his knees. Who cares if he’s being dramatic. He’d rather go out in a blaze of stupid over-acting than sit around and wait for the chill of a night in the desert to turn him into an ice cube.

“You’re pathetic.”

Ray whips his head around and glares back in the direction of the car. Technically, he’d volunteered to ride in Joel’s car, so he can’t really start a fight about it now. The fact that he’d volunteered because Michael had basically shoved him at the other man was besides the point. And Ray likes Joel, kinda, in that weird way people enjoy other people’s company from a distance because they don’t get a chance to interact all that much. “I’m waiting for scorpions to put me out of my misery,” Ray intones.

“You’re going to freeze to death,” Joel calls. He has the hood of the car propped open, and has been dutifully staring at the contents for the past hour. Just staring, because honestly they’re both afraid of what will happen if he fiddles around with anything. His track record with modern technology is terrible, often times leading to catastrophic failures. Ray doesn’t even want to know what sort of new hell will open up if Joel so much as even pokes at the battery.

Sighing, Ray pushes himself to his feet and wanders back in the direction of the car. “I’ll freeze to death in the car too, probably. We’ve got no battery power, dude, which means no heat, no nothing.” He thunks his arms against the passenger side window, pillowing his head on them.

To his horror, Joel’s response to this is to deftly slam the hood closed, like he’s shutting a freakin’ casket, and level Ray with a deadpan stare. “I’m not going to be responsible for the death of one of you boy band idiots. I’d get mauled by your circle-jerk of fans. Get in the car.”

Reluctantly, Ray allows himself to get shoved into the backseat of the car. As expected, it’s only a few degrees warmer than outside, and while he isn’t exactly shivering or anything yet, it’s only a matter of time. “Do we at least have water?” he asks as Joel slides in beside him. “Because I know you can drink cactus juice or whatever in desperate situations, but I’m not doing that.”

“There’s an entire crate of bottles in the trunk,” Joel sighs. “Now shut the fuck up and go to sleep.”

Ray waves his arms towards the view of the setting sun outside the windshield. “It’s not even dark out! Besides, shouldn’t one of us, I don’t know, stand on the roadside and try and flag someone down for help?!”

“There hasn’t been anyone in the past two hours, and there probably won’t be for the rest of the night,” Joel says tersely. “The sooner you go to sleep, the sooner it will be morning.”

“Don’t people die when they fall asleep in the cold?”

Joel lets out the most put out, frustrated sigh Ray has ever heard in his life. He unfolds from his semi-relaxed state and begins tugging the hoodie he’s wearing over his head.

Ray flips his shit. “Whoa, hey! This is not the opening scene for a fucking Nicholas Sparks novel! I’m not desperate to avoid death enough to warm my body up with that sort of-” He huffs as the hoodie smacks him full on in the face, and as he flails it off he sees Joel re-situating himself, arms folding over his chest and eyes falling closed.

“I wasn’t going to molest you,” he snaps when he peeks an eye open to see Ray’s staring at him.

And, honestly, Ray’s stunned by the tinge of hurt behind the other man’s tone. It’s not really the accusation Ray thinks that’s hitting too close to home (cause it‘s Rooster Teeth, they pull shit like that all the time), but the vehement reaction to the very prospect of sleeping with each other. Which, okay, Ray admits that it was a little rude. Joel’s a charmer in his own right, alcoholism aside, and he’s not bad looking. Fuck, if Ray thinks about it hard enough, they have flirted before. Briefly. A few times. Maybe a couple dozen. That’s not that many, right?

“Sorry,” Ray mutters. It’s the only response he can come up with. Under Joel’s annoyed frown, he dutifully tugs the hoodie over his head. Unsurprisingly, it’s ridiculously huge on him. Ray is kinda a small dude. Regardless, it’s still embarrassing to realize that the sleeves of the hoodie cover his hands with room to spare. Joel snorts, quickly snapping his eyes closed again when Ray shifts a murderous glare in his direction. “Actually, no I’m not,” he amends. “I’m not sorry.”

Joel just shoves at the side of his face until Ray’s cheek smushes against the window, his glasses falling askew over his nose. “Shut up.”

Ray doesn’t realize he fell asleep until he wakes up from the gripping chill of his own breath forming into condensation against the window and dripping off the pane and onto his face. He sputters, arms like noodles as he sits up.

It’s well past sunset now, what little sky he can see outside of the fogged windows is as dark as pitch and lit only by distant specks of stars. The interior of the car is fucking freezing, even with Joel’s hoodie, and when Ray straightens he notices that he can see his breath without squinting. Jesus Christ, they might really die out here.

Speaking of, he turns his attention to Joel, who’s softly snoring and has Ray’s legs held tightly in his lap. Ray suspects he might have been squirming in his sleep too much and this was the measures Joel had taken to avoid a kick to the face. “Dude,” Ray whispers in the darkness, leaning forward to shake Joel’s shoulder. The guy looks alarmingly pale, although that might be how he always looks and Ray just hasn’t noticed before because most of their god damn office is pastier than the majority of the population. “Joel,” he tries again when Joel just snorts in his sleep. “We shouldn’t keep sleeping. This is straight up survival film shit now.”

Still, Joel doesn’t stir. Ray’s beginning to really panic now, and he jostles himself out of the other man’s grip, scrambling to his knees and straddling Joel’s legs. He digs his fingers into Joel’s arms, right in the upper, inner part where he once read that the skin is the most sensitive. “Joel! Wake up! You’re freaking me out!”

To his relief, Joel’s head jerks up, and promptly obliterates all positive emotions via the force of their foreheads colliding. Joel swears and Ray jerks away, head thumping into the back of the passenger seat as he clutches at it.

“Fantastic thanks for saving your life,” Ray mutters. He is literally seeing stars right now. For fuck’s sake, how much worse can this trip get? Stranded, freezing, and now concussed. This wasn’t in the job description.

“What is it, like twenty degrees in here?” Joel shudders, bruised noggin forgotten as he wraps his arms around himself. He puffs out a very visible breath of air and whips his cell phone out of his pocket. “And still no signal. You’d think someone would have noticed that we hadn’t arrived yet by now.”

Blearily, Ray looks down at the phone between them and reads half past three from the screen. “Or they did, and they can’t get ahold of us either,” he grumbles.

“Maybe we should start recording a video will,” Joel jokes darkly. “Leave all my technical troubles to Burnie, and my stocks to Jack. I’d give you something too,” Joel adds with a glance to Ray, “But we’re going to die in the same car coffin, so there’s no point.”

“Leave me your gamer score. The combined total can be carved on my headstone for the rest of humanity to weep over.”

The chuff of laughter rises out of Ray first, who can’t keep a straight face after he says it, and it spreads like wildfire until Joel’s doubled over and he himself is absolutely howling. It doesn’t do anything to warm the air, and it only succeeds in fogging the windows up even worse, which with the condensation beginning to ice over, is the opposite of good. It’s okay though, Ray thinks as he wipes tears of mirth from the corners of his eyes, they say that laughter prolongs your life.

As they settle, Ray tilts towards the window and swipes his hand down the glass, leaving a streaked outline of it across the fogged window. “This is some _Titanic_ shit right there,” he snickers, “Like, it’s not even bad romcom and harlequin novel anymore, we are straying into serious fanfic territory now.” He withdraws his hand and moves to smear the moisture collected against his palm over Joel’s nose and mouth. “Moment ruined.”

“Pretty sure Rose never did that to Jack,” Joel spits, scrubbing at his face with the neck of his shirt.

“Why am I Rose?” Ray squawks. “You’re Rose! I made the reference, I get to pick who I am!”

Joel rolls his eyes, “I’m not the one who mimicked the hand on the window sex thing,” he begins to list, “Or the one wearing someone else’s old college hoodie like they’re the girlfriend at the football game.” Ray flushes. “And I’m also not the one currently straddling someone as if they’re the last horse up to Brokeback Mountain.”

Ray knows his face must be the color of a fucking beat, and is thus too thoroughly occupied with trying to hide himself behind his hoodie-sleeve covered hands that getting off of Joel doesn’t even enter his mind until he feels finger curl against his hips. “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Ray yelps, startled into scrabbling for purchase against Joel’s shoulders. “Fanfic-esque shit or not, I know for a fact that that sex to keep warm stuff is utter baloney! We are not-”

He jolts as he realizes Joel’s face is just inches from his. There’s no mistake that he’s waiting, hesitating, and Ray sucks in a sharp inhale as he recognizes the same flash of hurt in the other man’s gaze. “Are you fucking with me right here?” Ray asks, uncertain if he’s reading too much into this. “Is this some gay chicken dare that Michael set you up with? Or are you seriously-”

“I’m seriously serious,” Joel whispers, “if that’s what you’re asking.

And then he kisses him. Ray freezes for a moment, shock rippling through him all the way to the tips of his toes. It’s light, almost chaste, as if Joel’s giving Ray plenty of chance to push him off, to pull away. After a moment, wherein Ray tries his best not to hyperventilate, Joel leans back. He studies Ray, bottom lip curled between his teeth, and starts to lift his hands off the younger man’s hips.

“I’m processing!” Ray says as he feels the warmth begin to leave him with the retraction of Joel’s touch. “This sort of stuff takes a minute.” He grabs Joel tightly by the wrists, repositioning his hands back on him, this time against his sides. “And also more science,” Ray adds as Joel begins to stroke his thumb up underneath the warm cocoon of the hoodie. “You know how hypotheses work, right? Gotta test that stuff multiple times before you can come to a sound conclusi-”

Joel’s mouth overlays his own again, and Ray’s eyes flutter closed. It’s highly possible the fanfic writers were right here, because every time they break apart for breath only to be drawn right back together, Ray feels a wave of warmth wash through him. He fists his hands into the back of Joel’s shirt, draws him closer, presses the as much of his body as he can against the other man.

He gasps when Joel’s hands trail down to his ass, squeezing for a second before Ray suddenly finds himself being hauled upwards, the top of his head bumping softly against the roof of the car. Indignant protests die on his tongue as he finds himself bouncing off the seat, flat on his back, and Joel climbing over him. There’s really not enough room in a car for this, but Ray doesn’t give a single flying fuck-a-doodle about that right now, not when Joel is kissing his way up his body like he’s something to be worshipped, not when he swears he can feel the fire of each brush of lips through the fabric of both hoodie and t-shirt as if he was lying there naked. They’re not idiots, and other than running his hands up underneath the layers, Joel doesn’t make any move to strip him, to expose Ray to the chill of the desert night. He tangles his fingers into Ray’s hair when they make contact again, tugging until Ray lets out the most embarrassing noise against his mouth.

And for real, okay, Ray’s pretty much ready to condemn himself to being an iceblock right then and there if it means getting to have Joel’s hands and mouth on him, all over every inch of him. Hell, he’s halfway through fumbling at Joel’s belt buckle when he hears a tap against the window.

They both still, breath fogging between them fast and heavy. Slowly, Joel raises his head to stare at the blurred shapes outside.

“Please be a chupacabra,” Ray whispers.

Joel shakes his head and wipes a hand across the pane only to be immediately struck in the face by the beam from a flashlight.

“Ew!” Ray hears a voice yell outside. A distinctly Michael Jones voice … “Oh my god! You all owe me twenty bucks a piece! I called it! I’ve never been more upset that I won a bet though! Jesus, cheese and rice, I will never unsee this shit!”

“It’s about time you fucknuts came looking for us!” Joel barks, completely oblivious to the way Ray’s basically dying from embarrassment beneath him. “We could have fucking died!”

“You don’t look like you’re dying,” says the voice of a not-very-amused Gus. Ray’s never been so glad that he can’t see anyone before in his life, because he imagines this would be a lot more painful if he were actually in a position to witness the looks everyone must have on their faces.

“He said they could have ‘fucking’ died,” Michael corrects with a giggle. “And that’s probably an accurate description. I think I read this in a fanfic once.”

“ _I’m_ dying,” Ray whispers into his hands, mollified.

“Do you want us to leave you here so you can finish?” Michael asks gleefully.

“No,” Joel growls, “I want you to call a tow truck, then drive us to the hotel so I can fuck him in a god damn bed.”

Well, that shuts Michael up. For a second. Then he’s shrieking with laughter.

“At least I have something to look forward to in the afterlife,” Ray mumbles against his palms.

**Author's Note:**

> Definitely not the last Joelay fic I'll write, this was a lot more fun than I expected it to be :p


End file.
